Delhi graveyard running out of burial space with rise in COVID deaths

The biggest Muslim graveyard in the national capital near ITO is running out of burial space amid rising COVID-19 deaths with coronavirus victims from other NCR areas also being buried here, an official managing it said on Tuesday.

"There should be some arrangement so that COVID-19 victims are buried at graveyards in their neighbourhoods and their relatives do not have to come here because space is limited," said Haji Mian Faiyazuddin, secretary of Qabristan Ahle Islam in the vicinity of the walled city.

He said the management committee will write to the Delhi government for help to ensure that COVID-19 burials from other parts of the city are not shifted to the graveyard.

Faiyazuddin said a problem faced by the graveyard management is that it also has to provide space for burial of COVID-19 patients from neighbouring cities like Noida, Ghaziabad and Meerut who die while undergoing treatment in Delhi.

"Yesterday itself we provided space from a COVID 19 victim who passed away here in a hospital. We do not have any problem but space is a real issue," he said.

Although the space issue is not that grave at the moment but if the current rate of burials continue, there could be difficulty in accommodating even normal burials in around two months, he said.

"We receive around 4-5 bodies of COVID-19 victims these days. A total of 67 COVID-19 victims were buried here in September, 57 in October and in November so far 50 bodies have been buried," Faiyazuddin said.

Staring at space crunch, the graveyard management last month had readied 5-6 acres of extra space for burials of casualties caused by the virus.

The COVID-19 burials at the ITO graveyard, measuring about 50 acres, started in April.

Delhi reported 121 deaths due to COVID-19 on Monday. On Sunday, 121 fatalities pushed the death toll to 8,391, authorities said.